I happen to be one of them. Studied at Jamshedpur till class 12 and moved to a neighbouring state to study at a premium Engineering college, worked at Bangalore/Delhi for a big IT firm for 1.5 years but urge to come back to Jamshedpurwas too strong. Accepted a position with one of the largest manufacturing firms at Jamshedpur and was very happy to be back even if it meant a cut in salary and not so great growth opportunities. Soon it all changed, professional and personal situations demanded that I get back to my old IT world and I did that after 3 years stay at Jamshedpur.

Based on my own story I can clearly see two reasons for a youngster to move out of Jharkhand (I am sure there are many reasons, some of them I can list but then will probably let all of you to respond and that can be part of a different blog):

Education: I agree there are good educational institutions up to class 12 level in many of the cities within the state. But what happens when you come out of that class 12, all you can think of are a couple of old/not so great educational institutions to get a Bachelor degree... If you are professionally inclined, there are a handful of Engineering and Medical colleges. I have seen some of these very closely myself and sometimes I do wonder whether there have been any efforts made to improve their standards. I know a medical college where patients go only when they have no other option. So far we only talked about story of the middle class. Consider those poor people who stay beyond these cities, primary education is non-existent - lets leave that as topic for another day. Consider what option does a youngster have, work hard and crack JEE/AIEEE/PMT etc where chances of success is less than 2% in most of the cases. If you don't get through, go to Delhi/Pune/Bangalore to study something else, just think how many can afford to go out. Those who don't go out face various problems - late academic sessions, no classes at college, get 48marks out of 100 when you have correctly answered all the questions in the exam. So what do we do? Look at states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Andhra etc. They all have 100s of engineering and medical colleges and we can't even count numerous degree colleges they have. An average student in one of those institutes is much inferior than our average student but they all get good jobs. Lets think about it, these are not all government run institutions, in fact no government in India has that kind of resources. Government simply has to create supportive environment for Academicians and Educational Societies to start centers of higher studies in the state. If government has resources let it also participate in this process, but its energy has to be focused on insure that poor and needy, meritorious students, get equal opportunities as others. Government's role is to act as catalyst, provide required clearances and infrastructure in a timely manner so that new educational institutes can come up. But, and that brings me to my next point, good educational institutions can not be built unless you have employment opportunities within the state to absorb those who pass out from these institutes.

Employment: Jharkhand has been traditionally strong in Steel/Cement/Mining etc. However it is fast losing its numero uno position. Many industrial units have downed their shutters, the bigger ones have survived and some of them are doing great but you can count such companies on your fingers. Many new projects have been announced in last 5-6 years (Mittals/Tatas etc) but progress has largely been on paper. Political instability has also played its role. What we need to make sure that these projects soon see daylight and move out of paper to reality and all of us should demand the same from our political leadership. While I say so, it doesn't mean that we go with the approach taken by one of our neighboring state that forgot about its own people while wooing the industrialists. Development has to be inclusive and those who make sacrifices, have to be compensated properly to their satisfaction otherwise these projects are bound to fail like the great example we all know. Its time to move on to a different sector. Did we ever wonder why we have not been able to attract services industries to our major business centers? Worldwide we see that developed countries have a bigger services sector pie compared to traditional industrial sector. Why have we failed to attract companies like Infosys/Wipro/IBM/HCL etc to establish business centers in Jharkhand. Do they ask for something which we can not do? Here is what they normally demand -

Infrastructure (road/water/electricity/land/airports etc), Access to educated young minds (we need to get going with point 1 mentioned above), good Law and Order, Stable Policies, may be a few sops... Can�t we just do that and promise the same to these people. Unfortunately no, they all are result oriented people and they would like to see everything in place before they commit. Its not like you just invite Premjis, Nilekenis to your state and they will come running.... We have to invest, create support structure then invite them with specific proposals. Having an International Airport at Ranchi and domestic ones at Jamshedpur/Dhanbad etc will go a long way to convince these CEOs as their work requires lot of travel. Believe me it takes just one of them to come to Jharkhand and that will get many more going�. I guess it�s a 5 year plan, but we need to start now� We need a leader who can sell our capabilities to these large business groups. Start the process now, get feedback and focus on just that aspect.

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